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Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, And Other Inscrutable Geographies (2014)

by Alastair Bonnett(Favorite Author)

3.5 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

054410157X (ISBN13: 9780544101579)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: Unruly Places isn't so much about the places themselves as it is about the symbolism and psychology Bonnett sees in the theory of place. The book covers forty-seven different locations in several different categories, which basically means that Wikipedia will present you with more information on most of these places than this book will. I would have preferred to see a smaller selection with more information about each place, instead of such a huge range with little background, history, or description of the places discussed.
review 2: Ever since I took a course from Professor Roth (so many years ago the title escapes me) I have been a little obsessed with the concept of place. I remember writing a paper about the places of my life, places that seemed very con... morecrete and understandable. But as I discovered they are not that way at all and since then I have been interested in the mutability of place - the subjectivity of it. And so when I read the review of this book subtitled Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies I knew I wanted to be first on the hold list for it. It is a collection of essays about non-traditional geographies. It looks at ancient underground cities, floating nations, islands that appear or disappear with the shifting of the bodies of water that surround them, lands within disputed boundaries and countless other kinds of places that do not fit our common understanding of geography. Bonnett takes the usual conception of place and turns it inside out to examine the ideas of map-making, boundaries, habitation and even existence. All of this could be really abstract but I loved how human these essays were. For example the visceral reaction the author had to his exploration of the small, unkempt triangle of land bounded by expressways that he passes on his commute. And the city-within-a-cemetery where people literally live among the dead, not really as a religious or cultural ritual but because there is not another affordable alternative. It was fascinating and thought-provoking without being overbearing. The essays are arranged according to their challenge to place-ness and each essay built on the others in a way that expanded on the concept of place. But each essay could easily be read on its own and I could see a reader flipping to a section at random to just peruse. Though, of course I read it cover to cover because I liked it that well. less

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